Peach Care Homes: Creating a 'Starbucks for Seniors' to Pioneer an Entertaining, Youthful Approach to Elderly Care

As China’s population aging intensifies, the elderly care industry is attracting increasing attention from entrepreneurs. It is projected that by 2020, the potential market size for elderly nursing services and daily living assistance in China will exceed RMB 500 billion.

To penetrate this market, entrepreneurs must address numerous practical challenges. The solution must deliver value, gain recognition, and convince customers to pay.

In September 2017, Zhang Hao, aged 29, founded Xiao Tao Ai Jia in Xiamen, providing nursing-home-quality home-based elderly care solutions for mid-to-high-end households. The company is dedicated to helping seniors transition from passive care recipients to becoming proactive, independent, and self-reliant in their aging journey.

Zhang Hao carefully studied Starbucks’ success story and found that a key factor was its positioning as a “third space” independent of home and office, which led to tremendous success.

Inspired by this, Zhang Hao transformed the industry-standard “day care centers” for the elderly into a more youthful and entertainment-oriented activity space—Xiao Tao Commune. This approach achieves de-industrialization (emphasizing vitality rather than age), enabling seniors to socialize and engage in activities in an environment akin to Starbucks. Subsequently, Xiao Tao Aijia leverages Xiao Tao Commune as a traffic entry point to enhance user stickiness among the elderly, thereby driving traffic to Xiao Tao Xinghu and other business lines.

VCBeat (WeChat: vcbeat) has learned that in its first year of operation, Xiaotao Aijia signed contracts with five communities, served over 600 elderly individuals, completed age-friendly home modifications for 11 households, and established a partnership with a rehabilitation hospital.

Xiaotao Commune serves as the central hub for Xiaotao Aijia’s home-based elderly care services. It redefines the traditional model of community day care centers by discarding the conventional “small-scale community nursing home” design. By rebalancing the ratio of care spaces to recreational areas, extensively de-institutionalizing the environment, and expanding recreational facilities, it has become a key attraction for seniors and their families.

Xiaotao Commune Structure Diagram

Zhang Hao stated that Xiaotao Commune can be understood as the “senior version of Starbucks.” To break through the limitations of traditional adult day care centers, the first step taken was to implement de-institutionalized design, making the facility more inviting to older adults and their families. The second step was to expand recreational spaces, advocating that proactive aging is more important than passive elder care, and encouraging seniors to leave their homes, engage in more rehabilitative exercises, and increase social interaction.

Encourage seniors to visit, thereby enhancing customer stickiness. Xiaotao Commune offers age-friendly food products and courses for the elderly, while gradually identifying their consumption and entertainment needs over time.

It is worth emphasizing that Xiaotao Commune serves as the experience store for Xiaotao Star Care. Xiaotao Commune integrates numerous market-oriented concepts, including its built-in hardware design and software services, all of which are developed in response to the needs of the elderly. As customers become satisfied with the services offered at Xiaotao Commune, they develop brand recognition, which in turn drives traffic to Xiaotao Star Care and leads to an increase in its order volume.

Peach Star Care introduces American-style home care expertise, offering three core services: Peach Caregivers, Peach Nannies, and Peach Assisted Bathing. It has pioneered three service models: the Peach Care Assessment Index (Peach List), Peach Home Report (Home Paper), and Peach Smart Monitoring (Care Plus). Additionally, it provides a six-to-one team-based management solution.

Upon receiving a client’s request via phone, Xiao Tao Xing Hu dispatches a head nurse to conduct an in-home assessment of the elderly individual using Xiao Tao’s proprietary assessment index. A comprehensive set of assessment metrics is then generated and presented to the client in an easy-to-understand format known as the “Xiao Tao Family Report.” This report is shared with a rehabilitation therapist, a nutritionist, a psychological counselor, a caregiver, and a client manager, who, together with the family members, form a 6-on-1 care team.

Based on the assessment results, if the client opts for a premium plan, they will be provided with a smart wristband to enable continuous monitoring of their health data, thereby establishing the Xiaotao Care System.

In addition, Xiaotao Aijia has also launched services such as age-friendly home modifications, pre-need funeral contracts, and hospice care.

Positioning in the mid-to-high-end segment means that, in addition to high-quality hardware and software equipment, service quality must also be guaranteed.

Zhang Hao stated that the number of caregivers in each city is approximately 2,000 to 4,000, with no more than 2,000 in Xiamen. Due to the varying quality of caregivers, Xiao Tao Ai Jia implements an employee referral system, requiring five referrals for onboarding.

As for the highly contentious domestic helper market, Xiaotao Aijia will provide 90 hours of training focused on twelve common chronic diseases among the elderly.

The average age of the management team at Xiaotao Aijia is 29, making it a remarkably young elderly care team. Its members include managers from BlueFocus and Haokang Zaijia, as well as professional nutritionists, psychological counselors, and senior social workers.

When discussing competitors, Zhang Hao stated that companies such as Humingde, Xiaobai Jiahu, and Qingsong Kanghu are highly professional and worth learning from for Xiaotao. In comparison to these enterprises, Xiaotao Aijia’s advantage lies in its more family-oriented, de-industrialized, and entertainment-focused approach, providing the elderly with a more comfortable sense of “family.”

Regarding future plans, Zhang Hao stated that due to strong national promotion, various players are currently vying for the traffic gateway of day care centers. Xiaotao Commune will continue to collaborate with communities to expand its service scale and market presence.

Currently, the project is in the process of fundraising.

Investors or investment institutions interested in the elderly care sector may contact the reporter (WeChat ID: Shirley_CaiAx).

Startups with media coverage needs may contact the reporter.